Political Science & Public Policy

The spread of nuclear weapons is one of the most significant challenges to global security in the twenty-first century. Limiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons and materials may be the key to preventing a nuclear war or a catastrophic act of nuclear terrorism. Going Nuclear offers conceptual, historical, and analytical perspectives on current problems in controlling nuclear proliferation. It includes essays that examine why countries seek nuclear weapons as well as studies of the nuclear programs of India, Pakistan, and South Africa.

The Epicenter of Crisis argues that six contiguous states epitomize the security challenges of a post-9/11, globalized world: Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Characterized by a dramatically transforming Islam, ethnic conflict, civil war, failed states, and terrorism, this "new Middle East" is the epicenter of what some call an arc of crisis, stretching from the Balkans into Southeast Asia.

As terrorist attacks continue around the world, from London and Madrid to Afghanistan and Iraq, questions multiply about the effectiveness of current antiterrorist strategies. America's reliance on military approaches and the Bush administration's avowal of a constant state of war have overshadowed nonmilitary, multilateral efforts, and there has been an analogous neglect of these alternative strategies in the literature on terrorism.

Environmental regulation in the United States has succeeded, to a certain extent, in solving the problems it was designed to address; air, water, and land, are indisputably cleaner and in better condition than they would be without the environmental controls put in place since 1970. But Daniel Fiorino argues in The New Environmental Regulation that—given recent environmental, economic, and social changes—it is time for a new, more effective model of environmental problem solving. Fiorino provides a comprehensive but concise overview of U.S.

It is well known that American businesses make an effort to influence environmental policy by attempting to set the political agenda and to influence regulations and legislation. This book examines what is not so well known: the extent to which business succeeds in its policy interventions.

This comprehensive overview of the modern Chinese economy by a noted expert on China's economic development offers a quality and breadth of coverage not found in any other English-language text. In The Chinese Economy, Barry Naughton provides both an engaging, broadly focused introduction to China's economy since 1949 and original insights based on his own extensive research. The book will be an essential resource for students, teachers, scholars, business people, and policymakers. It is suitable for classroom use for undergraduate or graduate courses.

The global debate over who should take action to address climate change is extremely precarious, as diametrically opposed perceptions of climate justice threaten the prospects for any long-term agreement. Poor nations fear limits on their efforts to grow economically and meet the needs of their own people, while powerful industrial nations, including the United States, refuse to curtail their own excesses unless developing countries make similar sacrifices.

The precautionary principle—which holds that action to address threats of serious or irreversible environmental harm should be taken even in the absence of scientific certainty—has been accepted as a key feature of environmental law throughout the European Union. In the United States, however, it is still widely unknown, and much of what has been written on the topic takes a negative view.

The idea of America as politically polarized--that there is an unbridgeable divide between right and left, red and blue states--has become a cliché. What commentators miss, however, is that increasing polarization in recent decades has been closely accompanied by fundamental social and economic changes--most notably, a parallel rise in income inequality.

Is medical ethics in times of armed conflict identical to medical ethics in times of peace, as the World Medical Association declares? In Bioethics and Armed Conflict, the first comprehensive study of medical ethics in conventional, unconventional, and low-intensity war, Michael Gross examines the dilemmas that arise when bioethical principles clash with military necessity—when physicians try to save lives during an endeavor dedicated to taking them—and describes both the conflicts and congruencies of military and medical ethics.